Meta is reportedly planning to add facial recognition software to its Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses at some point down the line. The feature is already in development, and it even has an official name: ‘Name Tag.’ Just as the name suggests, Name Tag would help users wearing a pair of Meta’s smart glasses with this feature identify others, essentially putting a name tag on them so you would know who they are.
At first, that sounds like a massive invasion of privacy, not to mention a potentially big security risk. Meta doesn’t appear to have plans to just let this software loose, though. There seems to be a plan in place to limit its capabilities and limit who can be identified. Upfront, Meta says it has no plans to allow Name Tag to identify anyone you come across. That should be reassuring, but what about the potential for someone to modify this feature? That’s likely going to cause some concern. Meta assures the public, though, that the goal is not to hand everyone a tool for identifying every random person they see on the street.
Meta is still exploring who should be identifiable through facial recognition
The obvious issue with this kind of feature being in the hands of anyone who is willing to spend $400+ on a pair of smart glasses is the ability to identify people you don’t know. According to internal documents seen by The New York Times (via Mac Rumors), that isn’t Meta’s play. It’s reportedly still exploring ideas of how to implement Name Tag.
While it’s not clear what Meta will settle on, there are a couple of options that are mentioned. One such option is giving Name Tag the capability to identify anyone whom a user with the feature may know on a Meta platform. Such as Instagram. Another possible implementation is giving Name Tag the capability to identify users on Meta platforms whose accounts are public.
These are much less invasive than simply being able identify any random person you don’t know. However, neither is particularly welcoming, either. Should Meta decide to deploy this kind of feature, it will no doubt need to alert users. Letting them know that if their account is public, a person with Meta Ray-Bans with the Name Tag feature could identify them seems about the least it would need to do. Beyond that, it might need to give people an easier way to make their accounts private.
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